


a high-pitched piercing of pain

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Magic, Dark, Gen, Grey Wardens, Hive Mind, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 17:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: The Shriek Ambush. During, before, after.A three-part story set during the attack on the camp from three different companions' POVs.





	a high-pitched piercing of pain

_external conditions of force motion._

It disgusted him to see the ambush spring on the entire camp. Eight Grey Wardens and not one of them caught it until the moment the hissing cries broke out, but that was also a failing of their chosen campsite. A more defensible position, fortifications, lookouts who did not sing children to sleep.

But that came after the battle.

The enemy was upon them like a swarm of locusts on the bounty of a field, but despite Sten’s misgivings they weren’t a harvest for the taking. The Wardens found their footing quickly, at the least, when the first wave descended on the camp. There was no room for failure, so they did not fail. The singing of a blade in the night air. The pulse of war cries and songs. An arrow or a dagger following sight of line to the target of an enemy’s putrid flesh. He wondered why it seemed to follow a rhythm until he realized that it  _did._

Sten had watched the Wardens in previous battles, taking note out of the corner of his eye because his life depended on them watching him as well. They had not coordinated like this, like gears and cogs falling into place and transmitting reciprocating motion. A machine. A beast. A hollow emptiness behind their eyes. There was no higher thought there, nothing beyond the next movement. He wondered,  _where did the order and flow of battle come from?_

For the rest of the night, his pace was...off.

* * *

_the cradle song, but in sighs and shrieks._

They had nightmares often enough that Leliana had grown used to keeping an eye on them during her watch, soothing their nerves however she could. Mahariel was the one she tended to most, and sometimes the longest, as he got carried away with joining her songs and stories. Always an avid participant, a delighted little performer.

But tonight, they woke together within a horror, grey-faced and clammy and nearly speechless. Even the more stoic Wardens looked shaken, chafing under something shared and terrible. She reached Mahariel first to find him weeping silently, a hand kneading his stomach like he might just be sick. It wouldn’t be the first time he was ill; he had always been a little fidgety and queasy late at night.

She whispered his name, and he turned a furious, empty-eyed stare at her. No, he was looking right  _through_  her, tears still streaming down his cheeks. It was only when Alistair spoke up that she realized they all looked the same, a distant chorus of murmurs and sighs, like ghosts. Or like they had  _seen_  ghosts.

Mahariel stiffened at her touch, but slowly seemed to rouse from whatever state he had woken up in. Scrubbing his damp eyes, he smiled at her without meaning and asked her if she would sing with him again, and the choir of hisses turned into the first of the Shrieks that ambushed their camp that night.

They sang.

* * *

_new methods in arcane immunology._

There was blood long after the spell wore off, and Wynne’s magic couldn’t find a latch-hold, a grip, nothing to anchor herself to. The spirit of faith inside of her seemed repulsed by the mere proximity to him and wouldn’t come forth no matter what she tried.

She’d wanted nothing to do with it either. Her antagonism towards Surana was always centered in his coldness and apathy, proven mutable over the journey. But this magic, this foolishness...this utter madness was beyond her capacity to endure. And then Aeducan, holding him down as he shuddered horribly beneath her, growled at her that “if you have nothing to contribute  _then you can sodding move it.”_

And little Amell (but she was not so little anymore, was she?) took Wynne’s place and let her own magic flow like a bursting dam as though the air was not thick with the dark, cloying emanation of blood magic.

The rest of the Wardens made no mention of it either, and the others were silent as tombs when she looked at them to back her up. Morrigan sat by the supply crates, facing away while affording herself some safety in the form of the armed emissaries from their allies. She wouldn’t show her face for the rest of the night.

Wynne couldn’t make sense of what happened, the appearance of Mahariel’s lost friend, the horror of what the Blight’s corruption meant, the way that little boy had sobbed, imploring, on his knees. How Surana had answered.

The most chilling and abominable thing about that night was that come morning, every last one of them was still breathing.

Including the ghoul that answered to Tamlen.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, Tamlen survives the night in this AU. This story is connected to chapter 3 of _Grey_ , which is being revised and will be posted separately alongside this one. But that's the gist of the story: Surana pulls a risky and complicated series of spells, most extensively blood, blight, and ancient elven magic, to draw the corruption from him, and it changes everything.


End file.
